


time has a way of throwing it all in your face

by juggyjones



Series: in this universe, we're fighters [4]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Post 5x06, and becho is a fact, bellarke is really just implied, don't know which episode it was, maybe? - Freeform, set after the becho reunion, there is no (self aware) jealousy from clarke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-27 02:37:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15014819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juggyjones/pseuds/juggyjones
Summary: Clarke goes to finally reunite with the friends she lost over six years ago, but it's nothing like she expected it to be.





	time has a way of throwing it all in your face

Clarke knows they are on the ground and she knows they’re safe, hiding until it’s safe for them to come out, looking after Madi. She knows they’re here, and she knows Bellamy is here, but she doesn’t know if they’ll feel real when she sees them.

She’s still getting used to people, all around her. To Octavia, who seems to have become something of a cult leader; to Bellamy, who feels to her like he’s come back from the dead.

When she hugs Madi, the only person who makes her feel like she truly belongs somewhere right now, and someone who makes her believe all of this is not just a desperate illusion, she sees Echo. Kissing Bellamy.

It hurts, almost like a betrayal, but Clarke knows there’s no reason for that. He could’ve told her yesterday, or the day before, but she also knows he didn’t need to. It’s simply that he found happiness with someone and didn’t think she’d like to know.

Either way, she kisses Madi’s forehead and lets it go.

When Monty and Harper come out of the rover, Clarke feels her heart leap in their direction.

It’s not until hours later that Octavia’s ridiculous army has calmed down and they’re finally back at the camp that she gets to talk to them.

She’s in her new tent, making a bed for Madi and organizing the things Madi had along, and some of the things Clarke was given from the bunker. Madi is sitting on Clarke’s bed and watching her with a slight, thoughtful frown on her face.

“What are you thinking about?” asks Clarke.

“They’re not like you said they’d be.” There’s only a glint of disappointment in her eyes, but there’s something else, too. “Murphy isn’t funny. When he saw me, he asked ‘who’s the hobbit’. What’s a hobbit?”

Clarke smiles, sewing together a few pillowcases to make a bedsheet. There are worse insults Murphy could’ve given Madi and in a way, it’s almost endearing.

“You should ask Bellamy,” says Clarke. “He’s the resident nerd.”

“Okay.”

“What did you think of everyone? I’m going to talk to them in a few minutes, but I’m curious.”

Madi doesn’t reply immediately. Instead, she purses her lips and looks at Clarke so intently that Clarke feels like she’s trying to scorn her – only she’s looking through her, and Clarke’s seen this expression on the little girl’s face more than enough times to know she’s just thinking.

Hell, she’s the one who Madi picked it up from.

“They’re not really who I thought they would be. They’re quieter, I think. Monty didn’t say much and he seemed very paranoid, but Harper smiled at me a lot of the time. But Murphy and Emori are brave and stupid, because they both ended up risking their lives when it could’ve been just Murphy.”

“Huh. I’ll have to talk to them about that.” They had to leave Murphy inside the radius of the shock collar and she noticed Emori wasn’t tagging along, but she didn’t connect the two. “What about Echo?”

“I don’t know,” Madi says with a shrug. “You didn’t tell me much about her. I guess she was nice.”

“Yeah?”

“She was worried about Bellamy.” The words come out as unsure and when Clarke looks up to Madi, she’s biting her lower lip, eyebrows slightly furrowed. “I know that you—”

“It’s okay, Madi.” Clarke smiles at her. “Things change.”

Madi nods, still looking unsure, but she yawns and Clarke realizes she’s probably been dozing off for a while now, the conversation the only thing keeping her awake. So she places a kiss to her forehead and runs a hand through her hair, kneeling in front of her.

“You should go and take a nap and I’ll go talk to my friends. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good.”

She kisses her again and waits until Madi is spread across Clarke’s bed, quick to lose consciousness. She looks peaceful, like that, and Clarke is happy that she got to spend the last six years with someone like her.

But now it’s time to face the life she left behind two months before she met her.

Walking out of the tent is difficult because, after six years of living in a green, prospering land, she still hasn’t gotten used to the dry and raw air of the desert. And knowing most of the people she thought she lost are here, in her near proximity, is enough emotionally challenging that a part of her wishes to stay with Madi.

She still walks over to where Monty and Harper made home, in a tent next to Bellamy and Echo’s.

Clarke closes her eyes for a moment; breathes in. There are quiet, soft voices inside, and these are the voices she hasn’t heard it all too long.

Monty’s urgent, rushed voice against Harper’s calm and reserved, and there’s Bellamy’s deep and raspy, and Echo’s sharp, pointful.

She missed them. All of them.

When she enters, the conversation ends and four pairs of eyes look at her. From her left to her right are Echo, Bellamy, Harper and Monty, and all of them look slightly dazzled at hear appearance – even Bellamy.

“Clarke,” Harper says, and is the first to stand up and pull her into a hug.

“Hey, Harper.”

Clarke’s hands wrap around the brunette’s body, pulling her closer, and Clarke buries her head in her shoulder. She smells like plants and the ground, but something metallic, so Ark-like that a whiff of it brings Clarke back to the time when she was seventeen and living a blissful life.

When they pull apart, Harper holds her hands on Clarke’s shoulder. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

Harper looks entirely different and exactly the same at once. She’s now slightly taller than Clarke, her hair darker and longer, pulled into a braid in a Grounder style. She’s smiling, with her teeth showing, and her eyes are the kindest Clarke’s ever seen them be.

But she looks older. There are bags under her eyes and she’s more muscular than she was before, and has the stand of someone sure in herself. It’s a good change, but makes Clarke wonder what happened to her on the Ring.

“You know,” Harper says, “that girl of yours has got your fierceness.”

Clarke laughs, and it feels like she’s broken some sort of tension she didn’t even know was there. “Madi? Hopefully she wasn’t much trouble while I was gone.”

“She was amazing,” interjects Monty, directing a soft smile in her direction. “You’ve finally gotten a real child to raise after having to deal with a hundred of idiots.”

“Oh, come on. You weren’t that bad.”

Harper raises her eyebrows, looking pointedly at Monty before faking a disappointed face. “Remember when everyone got high off those berries?”

It’s supposed to be a joke, and Clarke almost laughs – then she sees Monty’s face.

He, too, looks older, but in a different way that Harper. The smile is wiped off hsi face and Clarke can’t even admire his stylish haircut—which, ironically, reminds her of Indra’s—when he looks like someone has slapped him. He looks weary, eyes heavy in a way that shows never-healed bags under his eyes.

Monty isn’t smiling anymore and neither is he looking at Clarke. His hands are resting on his knees, and his body seems to bear a weigh that Clarke recognizes from her own.

She knows why he’s like that, and worries if he’s ever truly gotten over the death of his best friend. She didn’t get to know much about it, and for a very long time, she thought it was cruel and unclean, what he did to Monty, but she never had any say in the matter.

It’s not her right. But she does have Jasper’s suicide letter to Monty, hidden away in her tent, and she wonders if it’ll ever be the right time to give it to him.

It’ll give him the closure he needs.

“Monty,” Clarke says, walking over. “How’s the algae?”

At that, he stands up and manages a small, still emotional smile. “They hated it.”

Everyone tries to protest and Harper lets out a chuckle, so Monty isn’t as distraught when Clarke pulls him into a hug. His embrace is tight and he smells exactly the same as Harper, and Clarke realizes she’s having trouble comparing this man to the seventeen-year-old boy she liked so much, so many years ago.

“I’m glad you’re here, Monty.”

He smiles, but he and Harper exchange a look that reminds her of so many shared looks with Bellamy. It’s the kind that only two people can decipher, and shows a deep, unspoken connection two people need to have to function in a partnership of any sorts.

Her ex-partner in crime is now sitting next to his girlfriend, his hand casually resting on her shoulder. She’s spent more time with him than anyone other than Madi since Praimfaya, so she only smiles at him.

Next to him, Echo looks unsure. She’s not looking directly at Clarke, and the blonde is glad the Grounder kept her traditional hairstyle.

“C’mon, Echo,” she says. “Do I not deserve a hug?”

Echo smiles and lets out a breath that’s too much of a relief than Clarke expected. When they hug, she sees Bellamy smiling over Echo’s shoulder, and Clarke smiles at him.

“You know, you now smell much nicer than you did back here,” Clarke tells her. “No offense.”

Echo laughs, pulling back. “None taken. I had six years of regular showers, it spoils a person.”

“It’s certainly better than spending six years only with a preteen.” It’s  ajoke, and Echo nods, still smiling, but Clarke feels like she said something that was wrong.

Maybe it’s from the way Bellamy’s smile drops at the corners, or how Monty and Harper look at the floor, but she feels like she didn’t say the right thing, even if it was a joke.

Clarke clears her throat, takes a step back from Echo.

“Any word from Murphy or Emori?”

Bellamy shakes his head. “They’re on their own.”

“They should be okay, right?”

“Yeah.”

There’s something they’re not telling her.

There’s _so much_ they’re not telling her, and she can’t even find it in herself to blame them. They spent years away from her, together, as a small unit, and she’ll never be a part of that, even if she was before. Before, when she and Bellamy were partners, and everyone else followed their lead.

That version of the people she knows is dead.

They’re not doing this on purpose, she can tell, but it hurts either way. It started hurting when she realized Bellamy and Becho were a thing, when she noticed Monty is still grieving Jasper, when Bellamy distanced himself from her, and when Echo felt as out of place between her and Bellamy as Clarke does now, with the group of people she would give her life for.

She _gave_ her life for. It doesn’t matter that she didn’t die – for all intents and purposes, she was going to die.

Maybe they didn’t get her calls. Maybe they spent six years thinking she’s dead. Maybe Bellamy, seeing her on the floor, found her as much a phantom as she found him.

Maybe things will never revert back to how they were before.

They talk—they started talking a long time ago, she just didn’t realize—but she doesn’t really participate. They talk about some stories from the Ring, but hearing how much fun they had and hearing about Raven and Murphy and Emori, the ones who aren’t here, it only hurts.

Bellamy might be the only one who notices, eyes focused on her most of the time. She exchanges a glance with him and just for a moment, things are like before – but then Echo brushes against his shoulder when she’s getting up, and the illusion is over.

This whole thing is an illusion. One that Clarke isn’t a part of – not anymore.

So she excuses herself saying she needs to go look after Madi and this time, she doesn’t think Bellamy notices the tremble in her voice – the lie.

Madi was right. The people Clarke knew are gone.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry?


End file.
